by The Editorial Board at The Wall Street Journal
The public debate on Georgia’s new voting law has become a stew of falsehood, propaganda and panic. Part of the blame lies with the partisan distortion of Democrats, part with their media echoes, and now part with CEOs of major companies who are uninformed at best or cowardly at worst.
Start with President Biden, the great unifier, who on Wednesday to ESPN called the law “ Jim Crow on steroids,” while saying he’d “strongly support” moving the Major League Baseball all-star game out of Atlanta. He’s picking up the smear about Georgia from Stacey Abrams, who still hasn’t accepted that she lost the race for Peach State Governor in 2018.
“You’re going to close a polling place at 5 o’clock, when working people just get off?” he said to ESPN. “This is all about keeping working folks, and ordinary folks that I grew up with, from being able to vote.” Mr. Biden either doesn’t know what’s in the Georgia bill or he is lying about it. We’d like to believe it’s the former, but that gets harder to credit as his falsehoods multiply.
On Election Day in Georgia, anyone in line by 7 p.m. gets a ballot. The new law requires an extra Saturday of voting, while specifying early voting hours: The minimum is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but counties may run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. In metro areas, “you might not notice a change,” explains Georgia Public Broadcasting. Elsewhere, “you will have an extra weekend day, and your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer.”
Then there are the big companies racing out PR statements of condemnation, though what’s often most conspicuous is their vagueness. The voting law “is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values,” said the airline’s CEO, Ed Bastian. He groveled that he’d had “time to now fully understand all that is in the bill.”
What a clumsy emergency landing. Last week Mr. Bastian said that “concerns remain” about the law, while he explained—accurately—that it “expands weekend voting, codifies Sunday voting and protects a voter’s ability to cast an absentee ballot without providing a reason.” He added: “For the first time, drop boxes have also been authorized for all counties statewide.”
What changed in the interim? Could it be that he has bowed to the woke mob, as the path of least political and commercial resistance? Why not stay silent if you don’t know what you’re talking about or can’t stand the heat?
Gov. Brian Kemp, who signed the bill, rightly called foul: “Today’s statement by Delta CEO Ed Bastian stands in stark contrast to our conversations with the company, ignores the content of the new law, and unfortunately continues to spread the same false attacks.”
Or take Coca-Cola’s watery statement. “We are disappointed in the outcome of the Georgia voting legislation,” said CEO James Quincey. “Our focus is now on supporting federal legislation that protects voting access and addresses voter suppression across the country.” He cited no specifics about either bill. Apparently Coke’s secret ingredient is pandering.
When woke progressives target a company with tactics like a “die-in,” as Coke received last month, CEOs seem to view a mealy-mouthed statement as cheap insurance. But surely we should expect more from senior business executives, who are supposed to have some backbone and concern for the facts. They’d react with high dudgeon if similar falsehoods were spread about their companies.
Yet so much of this CEO posturing cites no facts—or even fails to mention the word “Georgia.” American Express stands “against any efforts to suppress voting,” said CEO Steve Squeri. “ BlackRock is concerned about efforts that could limit access to the ballot,” said CEO Larry Fink. “Governments should be working to make it easier to vote, not harder,” said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins.
Georgia’s law does make it easier to vote, though it also tries to reassure citizens about ballot integrity. The state provides far more days of early voting than New York. It offers no-excuse absentee ballots, unlike Mr. Biden’s beloved Delaware. So who’s really suppressing whom? Georgia’s new law puts limits on drop boxes, but as Delta’s Mr. Bastian now regrets pointing out last week, it also makes them a permanent part of the voting system. In 2019, before Covid, drop boxes were illegal.
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CEOs may think there’s no downside to hopping on a bandwagon that insinuates that Georgia’s GOP leaders are inveterate racists. But far from dodging our partisan political warfare, they’re taking a side and promoting more division. They and their companies may pay the price when the woke mob decides to turn on them and they need GOP protection…